


Obviously

by JCapasso



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:07:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 19,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24946591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JCapasso/pseuds/JCapasso
Summary: What if Elena knew all about vampires before the night of the accident and had been on vervain her whole life? How would things have changed?
Relationships: Elena Gilbert/Damon Salvatore
Comments: 8
Kudos: 82





	1. Chapter 1

Elena walked away from the party through the woods as she talked to her best friend. It seemed like she’d had this conversation a hundred times by now. “I know Bonnie, you're right. You and my mom both are. I just can't bring myself to tell him. At least not tonight. I'll call you later.” Just as she hung up the phone, she looked up to see someone suddenly there. Had she been so lost in her head that she didn’t notice him approach?

“Katherine,” Damon breathed out in awe. 

Elena was confused. “No…um…I…I'm Elena.”

“Oh,” Damon said disappointed. “You…you just look...” Damon took a deep breath to get his head in the game. Of course this wasn’t Katherine. “I'm sorry…you just…really remind me of someone. I'm Damon,” he smiled, unable to resist the strange pull he felt towards this girl. Maybe because she looked like Katherine. 

“Not to be rude or anything, Damon, but it's kind of creepy that you're out here in the middle of nowhere,” she said slightly nervous. 

Damon couldn’t help but chuckle at that. “You're one to talk. You're out here all by yourself.” 

“It's Mystic Falls. Nothing bad ever happens here,” she said amusedly. When the conversation lagged, she found herself wanting nothing more than to keep it going. “Got into a fight with my boyfriend,” she told him. 

“Bout what?...May I ask,” Damon added, making it clear he wasn’t trying to pry. 

Elena sighed. “Life, future, he's got it all mapped out.”

Damon smirked knowingly. “And you don't want it?”

Elena shrugged. “I don't know what I want.”

“Well, that's not true,” Damon said gently. “You want what everybody wants.”

Elena couldn’t help but grin at that. “What, mysterious stranger who has all the answers?”

Damon chuckled and looked around to make sure they wouldn’t be disturbed. “Hm, well, let's just say I've been around a long time. I've learned a few things,” he said wryly.

Elena smiled brightly and decided to lay down the challenge. “So, Damon, tell me. What is it that I want?” 

Damon walked slowly towards her as he explained what he assumed everyone wanted out of life. He knew that he did at least. “You want a love that consumes you. You want passion…an adventure…and even a little danger,” he smirked. 

Elena found herself floundering. How did he do that? See through her so completely. She couldn’t help but ask, “So, what do you want?” Then it was his turn to flounder. He looked like no one had ever asking him that question before and that made her sadder than she would have expected to be over a stranger. Before he could answer, a car honked. “It's my parents,” she said disappointedly as she turned back around finding him much closer to her. 

Damon smiled and looked deep into her eyes, feeling that connection between them even stronger. “I want you to get everything that you're looking for,” he said honestly. “But right now I want you to forget that this happened. Can't have people knowing that I'm in town yet. Goodnight, Elena,” he finished softly before he disappeared. 

Elena blinked at the spot he was just standing. Vampire. That explained a lot. Well, no. Not really. But it did explain why he was out here alone in the middle of the night at least. Her parents had told her all about vampires when she turned thirteen, deeming her ‘old enough’ then, but she never thought she’d actually get to meet one. Unlike her parents, she refused to believe that every member of a species was irrevocably evil, not that she dared to tell them that. She did go along with their ideas of drinking vervain every day. She wouldn’t be surprised if they’d put it in her bottle as a baby even. Just because she wasn’t going to judge them based on something they couldn’t control didn’t mean she liked the idea of having her memories messed with or worse, being a snack. They had also taught her to recognize the signs of attempted compulsion so that she could let someone know if she met a vampire which was how she knew that was what he tried to do. 

She was pulled from her thoughts as her parents pulled up next to her and she got in the car, greeting them before letting her thoughts drift again. She wasn’t going to tell them about Damon. He hadn’t hurt her or even tried to. He’d been nice even and she couldn’t stand the thought of her parents going after him for it. Had he been offering her all those things he mentioned her wanting? It almost seemed like it, and the way he’d said that he wanted her to get everything she was looking for seemed so heartfelt. But no. They just met. How could he be offering her love like that. The rest, maybe and the very thought of him offering her passion made the blood rush to her face. He had definitely been gorgeous. There was no denying that. Maybe that was a vampire thing. To help them wheel in their prey. Would she have become prey if her parents hadn’t shown up? 

She didn’t think so. She considered herself a good judge of character and while she didn’t doubt that Damon could be extremely dangerous in the right situation, she didn’t think he would have hurt her. There had been something in his eyes. Something that called to her. Only the fact that she was immune to all of his potential mind tricks, as proved by the failed compulsion, made her believe that it was real. He was lonely, she realized. Hurting. But still hopeful. Looking for a connection just as much as she was. She couldn’t betray that by spilling his secret. She wouldn’t. He didn’t want anyone to know he was in town yet and she would honor that wish and keep her silence even without the compulsion. It was the least she could do for his kindness and even helping her figure herself out. 

Before her thoughts could go any further, the car was spinning out of control and they were going off the bridge. As the car sank, Elena knew that she was probably going to die. Her only hope was that Damon hadn’t gone far and would come save her, but she knew that was stupid. He’d taken off and she knew how fast vampires could move. He would be long gone by now. It figured that as soon as her life started to get interesting, it was going to end. Her last thought as she lost consciousness was that it looked like she wasn’t going to get everything she wanted after all. 

Elena woke up to a burning feeling in her chest as her lungs expelled water and there were paramedics leaning over her. Once the deluge had ended, she managed to croak out, “Mom? Dad?” No one answered her though and she started to panic. Then she felt a pinch in her arm and knew no more. The next time she woke up she recognized the hospital and felt a hand in hers. She gave it a squeeze as she turned to see her brother sitting beside her bed. Jeremy immediately jumped to his feet and ran to the door, opening it and calling, “She’s awake!” 

Suddenly there was a flurry of activity in the room and Elena couldn’t get a word in edgewise and just as quickly as it began, it ended and she was left with just Jeremy and Sheriff Forbes in the room and finally got the chance to ask, “Mom and Dad? Are they okay?” The look on Jeremy’s face at her question combined with his red-rimmed eyes didn’t give her much hope. 

“I’m so sorry, Elena. They didn’t make it,” the sheriff told her gently. “It was a miracle that you survived.” 

“No,” Elena breathed out as the tears filled her eyes. “No, no, no,” she cried rolling to the side away from her visitors. “It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.”

Jeremy leaned over and hugged her, his own tears joining hers as the sheriff put a hand on her shoulder and said, “No, honey. It’s not your fault. It’s no one’s fault. It was just an accident.” 

“I should’ve been home,” she sobbed. “I shouldn’t have called them to pick me up. I shouldn’t have even been at that stupid party in the first place.” 

“You couldn’t have known, Elena,” the sheriff assured her. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” She sat by her side until Elena calmed down before she got to the other things she needed to explain. “You two are going to stay with me for a little while once you get out of here.” They both nodded miserably. It was two days before Elena was released from the hospital, and they stayed with the sheriff for a week before custody was finalized and they moved back into their old home with Aunt Jenna and tried to get on with their lives and a chance meeting in the road was the last thing on Elena’s mind for a long time.


	2. Chapter 2

Elena woke up on the first day of school, three and a half months after the accident, and decided that today was going to be the first day of the rest of her life. That she was done moping around. She was done being the sad girl. She was just going to fake it until it became real. Meeting the new guy had helped. He was mysterious and it helped to get her mind off her problems. There was nothing like figuring out a mystery to distract her. Running into him in the graveyard was definitely another piece of the mystery too, but his reaction to her bleeding told her all she needed to know. He was a vampire. 

That brought to mind her last vampire encounter and she wasn’t going to let this one go. She wanted to learn more. More than the biased one-sided view her parents had given her. She had gotten side-tracked with the accident last time. Not to mention the fact that she knew nothing about Damon and how or where she could even find him again. This one went to her school. She had a chance to see him every day. That was why she invited him to come along with her to the grill when he brought her journal. She knew that it was giving people the wrong idea, but she didn’t care. 

When he told her that he didn’t have any family, she realized that he wouldn’t be the key to answers about Damon, but at least he could help her understand vampires. She made sure that he knew about the party the next night, but tried to make it clear that she was inviting him as a friend. She didn’t know how many people bought that, but it didn’t matter. She would take the teasing of her friends and even the glares of Matt who still hadn’t gotten over their break-up. 

The party was a disaster and Vicki Donovan ended up being a meal for a vampire. Elena couldn’t help but wonder if it had been Stefan or if there was another vampire around. She couldn’t exactly be sorry though. If anyone deserved it, it was Vicki Donovan. She knew that it was Matt’s sister, but a nineteen year old woman sleeping with her fourteen year old brother and getting him hooked on drugs when he was at his most vulnerable wasn’t getting any sympathy from her. Not to mention the way she kept jerking Jeremy around since. No, her only regret there was how hard Jeremy was taking it. 

Elena knew that if she told Stefan that she knew about vampires that he would clam up and maybe even leave town, so she played it cool. Once she found out where he lived, she went by to see him. She wanted more insight than she could get from the casual conversations. When she knocked on the door it opened, and she raised her eyebrow. Apparently vampires did go for the creepy vibe. She stepped in slowly, looking around in awe. And the ancient vibe too. This place was amazing. She heard the door creek and spun to look, but nothing was there so she crept forward slowly, on her guard only to be scared half to death by a freaking crow of all things flying directly at her face and she spun around only to hit the hard chest of Damon.

Elena managed not to say anything, remembering at the last minute that he’d compelled her to forget their meeting, but once her heart started beating normally again, she felt just as safe with him as she had before, even with his theatrics that she had every intention of making fun of him for once everything was out in the open. If it ever was. “I’m sorry for barging in. The door was…” she was confused as she turned to look. It had been open when she turned to him and she hadn’t taken her eyes off him. “Open…” she finished as she tried to figure out how he’d done that. 

“You must be Elena,” Damon said genially. “I’m Damon. Stefan’s brother.”

“He didn’t tell me he had a brother,” Elena told him, unable to keep the smile from her face. Not only was she seeing him again, but she had a direct line to him now. 

“Well Stefan’s not one to brag,” Damon joked, trying to ignore the warmth he felt at her smile. “Please. Come. I’m sure Stefan will be along any second.”

Elena let Damon lead her into the living room, not really caring about Stefan’s arrival anymore. “Wow. This is your living room?” she couldn’t help but say in awe. 

“Living room. Parlor. Sotheby’s auction,” Damon tried to keep the mood light. Very much unlike their last meeting that she didn’t remember. “It’s a little kitschy for my taste,” he admitted before taking the opportunity to hopefully extricate her from his brother. “I see why my brother’s so smitten,” he said honestly. 

Elena looked at him curiously. Since when was Stefan into her like that? She had done her best not to lead him on. Had he said something to his brother? Or was Damon just jumping to conclusions because she was here looking for him? 

“It’s about time,” Damon continued, oblivious to her thoughts. “For a while there I never thought he’d get over the last one. Nearly destroyed him.”

“The last one?” she fished for information, trying to figure out what game Damon was playing. 

“Yeah. Katherine. His girlfriend?” Damon pointed out resisting the urge to smirk. “Oh. You two haven’t had the awkward exes conversation yet.”

“Nope,” Elena said uncomfortably, starting to figure out where he was going with this. He was jealous and trying to cause trouble. She managed to hide how much she both loved and hated that. She hated the games, but knowing that he was jealous kinda made her day. 

“Oops. Well, I’m sure it’ll come up now,” Damon pretended to be sorry. “Or maybe he didn’t want to tell you because he didn’t want you to think he was on the rebound.” He planted the idea in her head. “We all know how those relationships end.” 

“You say it like every relationship is doomed to end,” Elena realized. Was that just because he lived forever and most people didn’t? Or was there more to it than that?

“I’m a fatalist,” he smirked with a slight shrug. 

Elena didn’t buy that for a second. No one talked about ‘a love that consumes you’ if they really felt that way. Not completely at least. She knew that some part of him still hoped for that dream, even if he thought it was a long shot. Because otherwise why would he even think it. Before she could call him on it thought, he said, “Hello, Stefan,” without taking his eyes off her. He really wasn’t trying very hard to pretend to be human. Stefan hadn’t made a sound. 

“Elena. I didn’t know you were coming over,” Stefan said emotionlessly. 

Stefan was creeping her out more than Damon ever had, even with his theatrics. “I know. I should’ve called. I just…”

Damon cut her off before she could say any more. “Oh don’t be silly. You’re welcome anytime. Isn’t she Stefan.” Elena couldn’t help but smile at Damon for that despite Stefan’s attitude and Damon took that as the green light to continue. “You know…I should break out the family photo albums. Or some home movies. But…I have to warn you…he wasn’t always such a looker.” 

Elena let out a huff of a laugh before Stefan killed the mood. “Thank you for stopping by, Elena. Nice to see you.” 

Elena knew a dismissal when she heard one as much as it irritated her. “Yeah, I should probably go. It was nice to meet you, Damon.”

Damon took her hand. “Great meeting you too Elena,” he said as he kissed the back of her hand. 

It was all Elena could do not to let on how much it affected her as he met and held her eyes. Kissing the back of her hand like that was the biggest clue that he wasn’t from this time. The move had been far too comfortable. She wondered for a moment what he would do if she called his bluff about the photo albums and home movies, and decided to keep that in her back pocket in case she got tired of the game they were playing. 

When she went to leave, Stefan blocked her way and it was only the fact that Damon was there that kept her from being freaked out at the cold look in his eyes and the threatening stance. Damon wouldn’t let him hurt her. She was sure of that. When he finally moved, she left a little quicker than she had intended, wanting to get some distance between herself and the brothers that obviously hated each other before things ended up coming to blows. She didn’t like her chances if she got mixed up in a vampire fight.


	3. Chapter 3

Damon felt like a jerk for being so drawn to Elena when he was so close to getting Katherine back. Just because she looked like Katherine didn’t make her Katherine and he was being disloyal with just the thought. He completely ignored the fact that she affected him even more than Katherine ever had. He just needed to get some distance. It was this thinking that led to him picking up Elena’s friend, Carol, Carolyn, Caroline…whatever her name was. That didn’t mean that he wanted or intended to stay away from Elena though. Just that he had a buffer now. Which was why when she told him about girls night, he invited himself along. 

He noticed Elena look confusedly at him when he and Caroline knocked on the door. When Caroline mentioned that they brought dessert, Damon jumped in with, “I hope you don’t mind.” 

Elena was taken aback at the whole thing. She’d seen Damon drop Caroline off at cheer practice today and had managed to keep her jealousy hidden, but a whole evening of seeing them together would be a different story. She didn’t know what Damon was playing at, but she couldn’t turn him away. “It’s fine. Come on in.” He was the only vampire she would consider inviting in the house. 

Dinner was slightly uncomfortable, but not too bad. Bonnie got the creeps from Damon for some reason and Elena wondered if there was something to her grandmother’s whole witch idea. Elena was glad for the chance to get to know Damon better either way. She didn’t have any illusions that his thing with Caroline would last anyway. Caroline would sleep with anyone and Damon didn’t seem particularly interested. She remembered her impression that he was lonely so that was probably it. 

Once they moved to the living room, Elena noticed Damon sit in the chair which was a clear move to get some space, but then Caroline went over and perched on the edge of the chair next to him and proceeded to be typical Caroline. As much as Elena loved her, she could really be tiresome sometimes. When she started talking about how Elena missed summer camp and would have trouble learning the routines and putting her in the back, the weary expression on Elena’s face was clear to everyone. Except Caroline. 

“You know, you don’t seem like the cheerleader type, Elena,” Damon said curiously, trying to get a little more insight into her. 

Elena couldn’t help smile at him for that before it was wiped off her face by Caroline’s words. “It’s just because her parents died. Yeah, I mean, she’s just totally going through a blah phase. She used to be way more fun…and I say that with complete sensitivity,” Caroline added sheepishly. 

Damon resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Barely. God, if she wasn’t so susceptible to compulsion and good for a decent meal she would be completely useless. “I’m sorry, Elena,” he said sincerely. “I know what it’s like to lose both your parents. In fact, Stefan and I have watched pretty much every person we’ve ever cared about die.” 

“I should go start cleaning up,” Elena said shakily, getting up and heading to the kitchen. 

Damon felt bad about the entire subject, but he hadn’t been the one to bring it up. He gave her a couple minutes to get herself together before he got up and headed to the kitchen to help Elena, bringing a glass with him. When he handed it over to her, it slipped from her grasp and he quickly caught it. Elena laughed. “Nice save.”

Damon grinned. “I like you. You know how to laugh. And you make Stefan smile which is something that I haven’t seen in a very long time.” He wanted to know what was going on with them. He knew that Stefan had a thing for her. That much was obvious, and that they’d spent a few evenings together before she came looking for him at the house a couple days ago. 

That made Elena wonder if his whole thing with Caroline had anything to do with the apparently popular idea of her and Stefan being a thing. She really wished everyone would just drop that idea. She was intrigued by Stefan, sure. She talked to him a lot, but mostly just to try and figure him out. I mean, a vampire pretending to be a teenager in high school? It was just weird. That didn’t mean that she cared about him. Still, this would be a good opportunity to get more information. “Earlier, did you mean…Katherine?” she asked curiously, having some idea that she was a big part of their story. 

“Mhmm,” Damon replied taking a plate from her and putting it in the dishwasher for her. 

“How did she die?” Elena asked. 

“A fire,” Damon said quickly. “A tragic fire.” He continued loading the dishwasher, not wanting to think about it. 

“Recently?” 

“Seems like it was yesterday.” 

That answered that question. It was too long ago to be feasible so he avoided the question. “What was she like?” Elena asked instead, choosing not to try and back him into a corner with that one. 

Damon got lost in thought for a moment before he managed to say, “She was beautiful. A lot like you in that department,” he covered as he put another dish in the dishwasher. “She was also very complicated. And selfish. At times not very kind, but very sexy and seductive.”

“So…which one of you dated her first?” Elena asked smugly as she handed him another plate. 

Damon chuckled tightly. “Nicely deduced.” How the hell did she manage to see through him so easily? “Ask Stefan. I’m sure his answer differs from mine,” he said shortly as he leaned down to close the now full dishwasher. 

“I’d rather hear your answer,” Elena told him as she headed over to start folding the dishtowels. She was just making up work now, but she didn’t want the conversation to end. 

Damon ignored it, having no intention of getting into that can of worms any more than he already had. “I’d quit cheerleading if I were you,” he changed the subject as he went over to help her. 

She sighed, but let him get away with it. “Why do you say that?” 

“Oh, I saw you at practice. You looked miserable,” he told her. 

“You saw that?” she asked, part sheepish and part smug. He’d been watching her. 

“Am I wrong?” 

“I used to love it. It was fun. But things are different this year. Everything that used to matter doesn’t anymore,” she admitted. If she was honest she was hoping for some good advice like he’d given her the night they’d met. 

“So don’t let it,” Damon said matter-of-factly, as he continued folding the dish towels. “Quit. Move on. Problem solved. Tada!” 

“Some things could matter again,” she pointed out. 

“Maybe,” Damon said. “But it seems a little unrealistic to me.” 

Elena got what he was saying. Life moved forwards, not backwards. She’d outgrown cheerleading. Her perspective of the world had broadened. It wasn’t likely to go back again. Since that was settled, she had one other thing she needed to say about the previous topic. “I’m sorry…about Katherine. You lost her too.” 

Damon looked at Elena in complete bafflement. Was she for real? How was it possible for someone to be so…compassionate? Did she honestly care or was she playing some kind of game? He’d seen Katherine toy with people that way more than once, but Elena really seemed sincere. Was she really that much better of an actress? Before he could figure out how to respond, Caroline and Bonnie came in and interrupted them. He wasn’t sure if he was glad or not right now. “Yeah, I should probably get going anyway. Let you get to your girl’s night. Thank you for dinner, Elena,” he said with a smile. 

“I’ll walk you out,” Caroline jumped to offer. 

On the way home, Damon came to the conclusion that Elena had to be playing some kind of game with him and probably with Stefan too and he didn’t like it. He had no idea how she was able to wrap him around her finger so completely, but he planned to put a stop to it. That led to him cornering her in the parking lot after the football game to play his own game. When she started talking about how Caroline was her friend and she wasn’t getting in the middle of anything there and then pushed him away before he even got a chance to try and compel her, he was even more confused. That made him highly irritated even before Stefan tried to confront him. 

Using both Katherine and Elena against him was a low blow and Damon refused to admit how right he was. How much he still desperately loved Katherine. How much Elena was getting under his skin no matter how hard he tried not to let her. How he just pretended to be a monster because he couldn’t deal with the feelings. Hearing it all laid out like that was tearing him apart, so he did the only thing he could do. Tore someone else apart instead. And if it got Stefan to drop his idiotic crusade, all the better.


	4. Chapter 4

Elena was kicking herself for saying yes to Stefan when he asked her to the founder’s day ball. She had just found out that Caroline was going with Damon though, and she refused to go alone. At least she had made it clear that it was just as friends. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t do anything to stop the rumors. It was too late to take it back now though. She was almost relieved when Damon and Caroline ran across them and Caroline convinced Stefan to dance with her. Elena spotted the barely covered bite marks on Caroline only because she was looking for them and she felt bad for her friend, but it wasn’t like there was anything she could do about it. Damon was a vampire and needed to eat and he had obviously compelled away the pain along with the memory or they would probably hurt a lot, so there was that. 

Once they were alone, Damon knew what he had to do here and actually gave Elena an honest apology for the way he’d treated her at the football game. He’d had the wrong idea about her and acted on it unfairly. Realizing that she was exactly what she seemed to be had been difficult for him to wrap his head around, not that he told her that part of course.

Elena managed to steer the conversation away from them and to Stefan and Damon, enamored with the story of the ‘original’ Stefan and Damon Salvatore and easily figuring out that they were one and the same. At least now she knew when they were from. The story also told her what happened to Katherine, though she didn’t buy the part about the union sympathizers. There was more to that part. She just wasn’t sure what yet. She wondered if their ‘death’ while trying to rescue her was what made them vampires, which led to wondering if Katherine had been a vampire, which led to wondering if that was what the fire was about. If everyone in the church that night were vampires. It would make sense. 

Elena felt bad for both Stefan and Damon. To have someone they loved so much taken away from them and killed just to find themselves turned into vampires trying to save her…it was heartbreaking. She’d never considered herself a hopeless romantic. She was far more into mysteries, but this situation was different. The more he talked about it, the more she could see how much Damon still loved Katherine, even now. Almost a hundred and fifty years later. She wished she could find a love like that someday. 

Elena spent the next part of the night dancing with her date, trying to pump him for information on his side of the story, but he was completely stubborn and wouldn’t give up anything. Damon was as open and honest as he could be without spilling their secret, but Stefan clearly avoided everything she asked until she gave up in irritation. It was this irritation that led to her confronting Damon, sort of, when she ran into him. “I hope you remember that Caroline’s mother is the actual sheriff, Damon, so you’re playing a dangerous game hurting her.” 

Elena managed to clear her head and returned to Stefan only for him to slip away suspiciously right afterwards so she followed him as silently as she could, staying back far enough that she hoped he wouldn’t notice her. Either he was more distracted than she realized or she was stealthier than she thought, because he remained oblivious. At least he seemed to. She hid in the bushes and smothered her gasp when she saw Damon feeding on Caroline. Knowing it and seeing it were very different things. The next thing she knew, Damon was on the ground coughing and gagging and Stefan was standing over him, almost like he was taunting him and then they disappeared in a blur.

Elena rushed over to make sure that Caroline was okay and ended up kneeling on something. Once she knew that Caroline was fine, she bent to pick it up. It looked like some sort of crystal or talisman or something. She was reasonably certain that it wasn’t Caroline’s so it must be Damon’s. She slipped it into her purse to give to him later just as Caroline woke up and Elena helped her get cleaned up and back to the party. Stefan was back not long after and she tried to fish for information about what happened without letting on that she saw. She even pointed out how rude it was of Damon to leave Caroline stranded in the middle of the ball, but when Stefan just responded with a disparaging remark about his brother, she knew it was a lost cause. 

Over the next few days she wished that she had thought to get Damon’s number at some point, but when she learned that Caroline hadn’t heard from him either, she got worried. She skipped school Friday, after making sure that Stefan was there, and headed to the Salvatore house. If Damon really had been using Caroline for her blood he wouldn’t have skipped days unless something was wrong and the scene she’d spied on took on a whole new meaning. She wouldn’t put it past Stefan to have his brother locked up here somewhere. 

She crept inside, glad that the door wasn’t locked and tried to figure out where to start. This place was huge. When she noticed the stairs to the basement, she decided to start from the bottom and work her way up. She didn’t consider herself easily frightened, but the basement here reminded her more of a middle ages dungeon than anything else and had her beyond creeped out. Not only that, but it was almost like a maze. She had no idea if she would even be able to find her way out by the time she heard Damon’s voice call weakly, “Who’s there?” 

She rushed towards the voice. “Damon?! Are you okay? What happened?” 

“Elena?” he asked incredulously. What the hell was she doing here? “Do I look okay? My dear brother decided that I needed to be locked up and starved.” 

“Well…I can’t do anything about the second part, but I’ll let you out,” she offered as she reached for the door latch. Just as it came undone, someone grabbed her from behind and pulled her away, yelling for her to stop. She stumbled backwards as he threw himself against the door to hold it closed and try to relatch it. He yelled at her to run, but she wasn’t having that, she ran at him and shoved him out of the way, letting Damon out. When he tried to attack Damon, Damon snapped his neck. Elena watched with wide terrified eyes at how casually he’d just killed someone. Granted it was someone who had attacked him and apparently been keeping him locked up, but it still took her a minute to recover.

“I really am…sorry about this, Elena…but I’m so hungry…” Damon said as he stumbled towards her. It seemed a pretty poor way to repay her for rescuing him, but he couldn’t help himself. 

“I’m on vervain, Damon!” she said quickly as she backed away. 

Damon stopped in his tracks, looking at her suspiciously. If she knew to say that and even be on vervain in the first place then she must know what he was, but she let him out anyway and she had been nice to him and maybe she was lying about being on vervain to stop him from hurting her, but he doubted it, because otherwise why would she let him out and then warn him. God, even his thoughts were all over the place right now. “Okay,” he decided to believe her. “Will you…help me out of here?” he asked weakly. 

“On one condition. I’ll help you out and find someone to eat if you promise not to kill them,” Elena offered. 

“Deal,” Damon agreed. It was better than nothing. 

Elena went over and slung his arm over her shoulder, allowing him to lean on her as he led her back out of the dungeon. Once they were back on the first floor and Elena opened the front door, Damon fell backwards, howling in pain and she could both see and smell his skin burning. She slammed the door back and rushed to his side. “Oh my god. Are you okay? Why did that…”

“My ring. Damnit. Stefan took my ring,” Damon snapped. 

“Your ring? What does that have to do with anything?” Elena asked confused. 

“The ring is spelled. It’s what protects me from the sun,” Damon groaned as he pulled himself to his feet with some effort and some help from Elena. “You should go,” he told her. 

“Why?” she asked worriedly. She didn’t want to leave him like this.

“Because vervain or not, I’m hungry enough that you’re gonna be in danger if you stay,” he explained. 

“No,” Elena shook her head. “I promised to help you and I’m going to. Just let me think for a minute.” She helped him to the couch before she started to pace and finally got an idea. “I know!” she pulled out her phone and called the pizza place and put in a delivery order. 

“I need blood, Elena. Not pizza,” Damon snapped as she hung up. 

“I know,” she smirked. “The pizza is for me. The delivery guy is for you. But no killing remember.” 

Damon blinked at her for a minute before he barked a laugh. He still had to point out though that, “It’s going to take more than one person if I can’t kill them.”

Elena sighed and pulled her phone back out. “I guess we’re gonna have plenty of leftovers then,” she pointed out as she called the Chinese place. This time Damon handed her his credit card for the order. “Will that be enough?” she asked hopefully, but he shook his head so she called the only other pizza place in town that would deliver out here and then the Thai food place before he was finally satisfied that it would be enough.


	5. Chapter 5

Damon knew better than to start the whole vampire conversation when he was still so starved that he felt like he was going to snap any minute. All it would take is one wrong word from her and he would end up doing something he would regret. 

Elena wasn’t much for conversation at the moment either as she paced the room nervously. In all her curiosity about vampires, never did she imagine that she would find herself in the position of luring people in to be eaten by one. She was more than a little worried that Damon would kill them anyway, despite his promises, and then it would be her fault. She didn’t know if she could take that. She had trusted him so far though and she hadn’t regretted it yet. 

When she heard the doorbell, she went to answer it and invited the guy in to put the pizza on the table and no sooner than she closed the door behind him, Damon was there feeding on him and the pizza fell to the floor. Elena picked it up with a wince and went to set it on the table as Damon pulled away from him, blood dripping down his chin before looking into the guy’s eyes and compelling him to forget and that he was woozy because he hadn’t eaten today. The deliveries came almost back to back, and Damon almost looked like himself again by the time the last one left. “You okay now?” Elena asked gently, glad that he’d lived up to his promise and not killed any of them. 

“Okay enough,” Damon said with relief, licking the blood off his lips and then his fingers that he used to clean his chin. “It’ll last me until dark at least.” 

“Good,” Elena breathed out with just as much relief before grabbing a pizza and going to sit down on the couch. She sighed as she opened it. “You couldn’t have waited for him to put the pizza down first?” she asked wearily, closing the box back and going to grab one of the pizzas from the second place that should still be intact. 

Damon gaped at her for a second before he burst into laughter. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I like you.” Elena rolled her eyes as she started eating. She had skipped breakfast and it was almost lunchtime after all. “How long have you known?” Damon finally asked. 

“Since you tried to compel me the night we met,” Elena shrugged. 

“Oh…so…it didn’t work then?” Damon asked, completely taken off guard. 

“You do realize that my parents were vampire hunters right?” she asked pointedly. “I’ve been on vervain my entire life and as soon as I was old enough, they told me what to be careful of.”

“But you still made friends with vampires…why?” Damon asked confused. 

“Because I refuse to believe that an entire race is evil,” she said with another shrug. “You were nice to me. That mattered more than the fact that you’re a vampire.”

“And my brother?” Damon asked. 

Elena huffed. “Honestly, your brother kinda creeps me out a bit with that whole broody, evasive, stalker vibe he has. And that was before what he did to you. I don’t know why everyone is convinced that there’s something going on between us.”

“You went to the ball with him,” Damon pointed out. 

“Because he’s the only one who asked. And I made it clear that I was only going as his friend,” Elena told him. “My turn to ask a question?” 

“Shoot,” Damon said leaning back. The least he could do is answer her questions. 

“Was it you or Stefan that attacked Vickie and Mr. Tanner?” 

“That was me. Stefan only drinks animal blood,” Damon said honestly, not sure if he wanted her to abandon him as irredeemable or not. He decided to just go with the truth and let the chips fall where they may. 

“Why?” 

“Vickie was because she was at the party Stefan was at. I was trying to frame him. The coach was because Stefan pissed me off and I lost my temper.” 

“This whole thing with you and Stefan…is it just because of your feud over Katherine?” Elena asked, filing that answer away to be considered another time. 

“/That/ is a very long, involved, and personal story,” Damon said. 

“Okay. Fair enough,” Elena decided not to push that one. Not while he was being so open about everything else. “Oh! I’ve got something for you,” she remembered and grabbed for her purse. 

Damon shifted uncomfortably, wondering what she was doing. Was all this just to lull him into a false sense of security before she attacked? If she knew he was a vampire from the start and her parents were vampire hunters it was a possibility. “What?” he asked suspiciously. 

Elena pulled the crystal amulet out of her purse. “You dropped this at the party when Stefan grabbed you. I didn’t know if it was important or not so I held onto it for you.”

Damon’s eyes went wide and he snatched it from her hands. “Thank you,” he breathed out. He’d been so afraid he would never see this again. That it was lost for good. 

“What is it?” Elena asked curiously. 

Damon considered her for a moment, trying to decide if he should answer. “If I tell you, you can never tell a soul. Especially not my brother.” 

“I promise,” she assured him. 

Damon decided to take a chance. She had already proven that she could be helpful and was probably the only person to know the truth about him and accept him anyway. Her knowing could come in handy in some way that he didn’t know yet and he didn’t even have to worry about anyone compelling the information from her with her being on vervain. “Katherine isn’t dead,” he explained. 

“What?” Elena asked surprised. 

“She had a witch friend…Emily. She sealed them all up in a tomb under the church to save their lives. They’ve been there desiccating for the last hundred and forty five years. Emily enchanted this talisman to be able to open the tomb when the comet returned so they could be rescued.” 

“Oh my god,” Elena gasped. “So…there are twenty seven vampires sealed up in there? Desiccated? What does that mean?” 

“When a vampire starves, their body withers away and they’re trapped in their mind. It’s horribly painful, but they can be revived once they get some blood,” Damon told her. 

“And you want to free them all? Are you sure that’s wise?” 

“What happened to vampires are people too?” Damon scoffed. 

“Well yeah. I mean…I’m not judging them unless I know them, but there’s still the point that there are a lot of them and this is a small town and with them starving like that…”

Damon conceded the point. “I know. And you’re right. Saving them all is a bad idea for that very reason. Plus the fact that most of them are not the kind of vampires you want running around. I just plan on going in to get Katherine and that’s all.” 

“What can I do to help?” Elena asked. 

“First, I need my ring back from my brother,” Damon told her. 

“I’ll try to talk to him,” she promised. 

“I doubt that will work,” Damon told her. “If I had a hostage though. Someone he liked to exchange for the ring…” 

Elena laughed and shook her head. “Gee that wasn’t subtle at all,” she said wryly. “Sure, I’d love to play hostage for you to get your ring back. BUT…” 

Damon sighed. Of course, that was too easy. Granted he could just do it anyway, but he preferred to play nice with her as much as possible after everything she’d done for him today. “But what?”

“I want a standing deal. No killing unless it’s necessary,” she told him. 

“Define necessary.”

“If it’s a matter of life or death or you or someone else is being threatened,” Elena said easily. 

“You realize that I can’t make the same deal for Katherine when we get her out, yes?” 

“I know,” Elena said. 

“The deal only counts as long as I’m staying in this town,” he amended. 

“Good enough,” Elena agreed. 

“Then we have a deal,” Damon took her hand when she extended it to shake on it. “Does my dear brother know that you’re on vervain?” 

“No. You’re the only person that knows other than my brother who’s on it too,” she told him. 

“Good,” Damon smirked, yanking her over to his couch, and wrapping his arm around her tightly. “Then it’ll be an effective threat,” he whispered in her ear just before the front door opened. “Stefan!” Damon said with mock geniality. “So nice of you to come home early.” 

“Damon!” Stefan gasped with wide eyes as he took in the scene. “How did you get out? Where’s Zach?”

“Elena here was nice enough to find me. You really should learn your lesson about keeping secrets little brother. People tend to snoop for answers if you don’t give them and then they are easy prey for a little compulsion,” Damon smirked, brushing his hand through Elena’s hair as he turned to sniff her deeply. 

It took Elena a second to remember that she was supposed to be a hostage so she struggled against him, but he just held her tighter. “Let her go, Damon,” Stefan ordered.


	6. Chapter 6

“Ah, ah. Not just yet,” Damon sing-songed. “You did have another question didn’t you? Where is Zach. Well…he put up a bit of resistance to the idea of my freedom. Funnily enough, his neck didn’t put up much resistance when I snapped it.” 

“No…” Stefan breathed out, looking back towards the basement, but not willing to leave Damon alone with Elena who was still struggling. “Damon please…just let her go. She doesn’t need to be a part of this.”

“I agree,” Damon smirked. “I would be more than happy to let her go. IF you return my ring to me.” 

“I don’t have it,” Stefan told him worriedly. 

“Then you better go get it,” Damon told him. “Chop Chop. Before I get hungry enough to take the available meal.” He brushed Elena’s hair back and bared his fangs at her neck. 

“Let her go and we’ll go get it together,” Stefan tried to reason. 

“And give you another chance to stab me in the back while I’m weak? Not a chance, brother. The ring for the girl. That’s your only option.” 

“Damon…” 

“Please, Stefan,” Elena begged, trying to help Damon out, playing up her fear. 

“Clock is ticking, baby brother. Might want to hurry it up,” Damon taunted, making a point by pressing a kiss to Elena’s neck, feeling her shudder in his arms. 

“Fine…but if you hurt her…”

“Tick tock,” Damon interrupted and Stefan blurred out the door. 

Elena burst into laughter and leaned against Damon’s side. “You really are a drama queen aren’t you?” 

“Excuse me?” Damon asked affronted. 

“I mean, I figured with the whole bird and the fog and popping up from nowhere thing, but you totally have the creepy sinister villain act down pat don’t you,” she said with hilarity. 

“Hey I thought Stefan was the creepy one,” he couldn’t help but laugh with her as she elbowed his side. “And you’re not so bad an actress yourself.”

“Oh please. All I had to do was act scared,” she pointed out. 

“Maybe, but that shudder when I kissed your neck was masterful.” Damon smirked at her and leaned close, “Unless it was for a different reason, hmm?” he asked seductively. 

“Don’t even start that,” Elena warned amusedly. “We’re trying to rescue your one true love remember?” 

It wasn’t lost on Damon that she hadn’t denied it, but her words did remind him why continuing that line of thought would be a bad idea. Random sex or even a little fling here and there was one thing, but there was way too much baggage with Elena to risk going there, so he let it drop. “Very true,” he told her before straightening back up again and whispering in her ear, “Game time again.” 

She nodded and returned to her ‘hostage’ position and put a look of fear back on her face as Stefan blurred back into the room. “I have the ring. Now let her go and then I’ll give it to you,” he said firmly, glad to see that she was still in one piece. 

“Give it to me first and then I’ll let her go,” Damon said smugly. “I’m not as stupid as you obviously think I am.” Instead Stefan set the ring carefully on the table between them and then stepped back, holding his hand out to Elena. “Just a minute there, brother,” Damon told him before turning to look Elena deep in the eyes. “You never came here today. You slept in and missed school and spent the day watching tv.” 

Elena pretended the compulsion worked as she got up and headed for Stefan in a daze. He got her out to her car before returning to find Damon stretched out on the couch again, ring gleaming on his finger. “Damon…” he started nervously. 

“If you even think about trying something like that again, Stefan…I will kill Elena and then level this entire town to the ground. Understand?” Damon hissed coldly. When Stefan nodded nervously, a grin broke out on Damon’s face and he clapped a hand to his brother’s shoulder. “Good. It was a pleasure doing business with you, but I find myself rather famished at the moment, so we can catch up later.” 

Elena took her time driving home, needing to get her thoughts together after the insane day she had. Between finding Damon locked up and starving, letting him out, watching him kill someone, luring a bunch of people for him to feed on, then pretending to be a hostage to get his ring back, she was about as deep in this thing as it was possible to be now. That wasn’t even counting everything that he’d told her. The most prevalent thought in her mind right now though was that he trusted her. 

He trusted her with the truth about himself. The truth about the people he’d hurt and killed. The truth about Katherine and the tomb. He trusted her to help him. That meant a lot to her. He could have killed her just as easily as he’d killed Zach, but instead he let her leave with his secrets, knowing that he couldn’t compel them away. Why had he pretended to compel her though? That didn’t make sense. Through all her thoughts one kept popping up no matter how many times she swatted it away. That kiss to her neck. She could almost still feel his lips there. She knew it was mostly for show, but she still couldn’t get it out of her head. 

When she got home, she found an email from Bonnie with the day’s homework and asking if she was okay. She replied that she overslept and spent the day watching tv. It was as good a cover story as any. She also had an email from Caroline reminding her about the car wash fundraiser the next day that Caroline was still insisting that she help with even though she wasn’t a cheerleader anymore. She replied that she would be there and then settled in to work on her homework. 

It was late and she was walking back into her room to go to bed when she saw Damon sitting in the window seat. “Damon, what are you doing here?” she asked confused. 

“I just wanted to thank you for today,” he told her. 

“Well…you’re welcome,” she said with a smile. “I take it you’re all topped off now? You look a little more together.” 

“Yes. I’m back to normal again and there is a group of stoners in the woods sleeping off a crazy high,” he chuckled. “And no, your brother isn’t one of them,” he added before she could ask. 

“Thank you, Damon,” she sighed with relief. “And I’m sure it goes without saying…”

“Your family is off limits. Vervain or not. I get it,” Damon agreed before she even had to ask.

“When were you going to get Katherine?” she asked curiously. 

“It has to be during the full moon next week,” he told her. “Which brings me to the other reason I’m here.” 

“Oh?” she asked. 

“I’m sure that it comes as no surprise to you that I don’t trust my brother,” Damon explained. 

“No, really?” Elena asked sarcastically. 

Damon chuckled at that. “That said, I don’t doubt that he would take any opportunity to ransack my things. And I can’t be certain that he doesn’t know me well enough to anticipate other hiding places I might use.” 

“You’re trusting me to hide the talisman?” Elena asked in shock. 

“I’m trusting you to /choose/ a hiding place. In this house that I can get into but he can’t,” Damon told her.

Elena nodded and went over to her closet, motioning him to follow. She pushed her clothes to the side and knocked on a part of the wall revealing a secret compartment filled with her old journals. If he could show that much trust in her then she could show the same in him. “Now I’m trusting you just as much with the location of my secret journals,” she pointed out. 

Damon smiled and nodded, feeling much better about this crazy idea now, and he handed her the amulet, watching as she hid it down behind the journals on the left. “I’ll be back for it when it’s time.” 

“Can I go with you?” Elena asked hopefully. 

“Why?” he asked confused. “It’s not like you can donate the blood to revive her with the vervain in your system.”

“I know. I’d just…like to meet her is all. And if someone tries to stop you, having a hostage might come in handy?” she suggested with a shrug. 

Damon chuckled and shook his head. “Okay. If you want to come, you can. I’m sure she would be just as intrigued to meet you.”

“Why?” Elena asked confused. 

“You’ll see,” he said with a smirk. “I’ll be in touch.”

“Wait,” she called after him before he could leave. When he turned back, she asked, “Why the fake compulsion earlier?” 

“Because if you and I are going to remain friendly with each other, my brother needs to believe that you don’t remember me taking you hostage, threatening to kill you, and the fact that we’re vampires. Plus he would never believe that I'd let you go with your memory intact.” 

“Oh. Right. That makes sense,” she said sheepishly. 

“Goodnight, Elena,” Damon said softly. 

“Goodnight, Damon,” she returned before he disappeared, leaving nothing but the fluttering curtains of her bedroom window.


	7. Chapter 7

The next day at the carwash, Elena was surprised when Damon showed up, but caught the smug looks he kept shooting at his brother and the nervous looks that Stefan kept sending back and she figure it out. What she missed was the way he kept looking at her when no one was paying attention. If there was one good thing about Damon’s incarceration, it was that Caroline had dumped him. She told Elena that he left her at the ball and didn’t call her for days. Still hadn’t even called her, and she was done with letting him treat her that way. Elena was glad for that. She would hate to see Caroline end up heartbroken when Damon got Katherine back next weekend. 

That night after she got home, she got a text message from who she assumed was Damon. ‘It’s still safe?’ She replied back, ‘How did you put your number in my phone?’ Knowing him she wasn’t the slightest bit surprised that his name came up as ‘Studly’. It wasn’t long before she got another response. ‘I had time to kill while you were pacing waiting for the food. So is it still safe?’. Elena rolled her eyes and went to check the hiding spot, pulling it out enough to take a picture and send it to him before she dropped it back and closed the compartment again. She got a blown kiss emoji back and she laughed before going to get ready for bed. 

There was more than once over the next week that she got home to find her clothes messed up in her closet, and every time she checked it was still there so she assumed that he was sneaking in to check for himself and she hoped that was all he was doing in there. It didn’t /look/ like her journals had been touched at least. He hadn’t texted her to check in again since the first night, so it was a reasonable assumption. 

The next time she heard from him directly was the night of the full moon when he texted her to meet him at the old church at nine that night and that he just grabbed the talisman. She texted back an affirmative as she got in her car to head home from school. She was a little jittery for the rest of the night, but when she went to leave at eight, Jenna teased her about having a date, but said that it was about time. Elena let her think that, not really sure how to explain that she was helping a vampire open a tomb of other vampires to rescue the love of his life after a century and a half. Date was easier. Even if it meant that she had to risk ruining nice clothes instead of old ones. 

When she got there, the first thing Damon said was, “So, there’s been a little change of plans.”

“What kind of change of plans?” Elena asked curiously. 

“Oh good. You even brought a Gilbert,” she heard a voice say from behind her. “I always wanted to revive her with Gilbert blood.”

Damon blurred past her and grabbed the girl by the neck. “You touch her, I will kill you,” he hissed. 

Elena assumed she was part of the change of plans and that they were working together, so she just reminded Damon, “I’m on vervain anyway Damon, remember?” She put a calming hand on his shoulder and he relaxed with a huff. 

“Then why’d you bring her if she can’t be used to revive them?” the girl asked confused. 

“Because she’s helped me get this far and she wanted to come,” Damon said shortly. “Elena this is Anna,” he introduced her. 

“Nice to meet you,” Elena said with a friendly nod, not reaching her hand to someone who wanted her blood a minute ago. She just nodded curtly back so Elena turned to Damon. “So we’re getting more than just Katherine now?” she asked.

“Is that a problem?” Anna asked confrontationally before he could answer. 

“No,” Elena shook her head. “Just wondering what the plan is.”

“I just want my mother back,” Anna told her. 

“Okay,” Elena nodded. “Then we’ll get her too.” Anna relaxed at that and gave her a slight smile. 

“Come on. We’ve got ten minutes before the moon reaches it’s peak,” Damon told them, motioning them into the hole, making sure to stay between Anna and Elena. Once they were down there, Damon placed the amulet in a hole in the doorway that seemed designed for it and they waited. 

When the door opened, Anna pushed past them and rushed inside, but Damon wasn’t far behind and Elena brought up the rear. “You can wait outside you know,” Damon told her when he realized she was following him. 

“I know, but I don’t know Anna or her mother. By your side seems the safest place to be,” she pointed out. 

“Fair enough,” Damon shrugged, a little uncomfortable with the idea of being thought of as a protector rather than a predator, but he ignored it as they wound their way through the tomb. 

Elena was more than a little unsettled at the macabre sight, made even more creepy by the torchlight and she found herself holding onto Damon’s arm tightly. She could tell he was amused by that, but didn’t really care right now. She would yell at him for laughing at her later. He stopped to check every body that they passed and when they got to the end, he froze for a long moment. Like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing and it needed time to register in his mind. “Damon?” Elena asked gently. 

“She’s not here…” he breathed out in disbelief. 

“What?”

“She’s not here,” he said angry this time before he snapped and threw the torch at the wall. “How can she not be here?!” 

Elena’s eyes widened as the bodies went up in flames when the torch hit them, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Damon…” she reached for his arm again, but he just jerked it away. 

“How can she not be here?!” he yelled again. 

“Damon we need to go,” Elena said desperately grabbing his hand this time and tugging it. The fire was spreading fast. Too fast. If they didn’t hurry they would be trapped. Thankfully that seemed to jolt Damon out of it and he let her pull him back towards the exit quickly. When they passed Anna and her mother having a joyful reunion, she told them, “We need to get out of here quick,” she told them, not pausing to make sure they followed. 

Once they were outside, followed soon after by Anna and her mother who still seemed very weak, Damon rounded on Anna. “You knew she wasn’t in there,” he accused. 

“You wouldn’t have helped me,” Anna said apologetically. 

Damon blurred forward and grabbed Pearl by the throat. “Why do you get a happy ending?” he snapped. 

Elena watched worriedly, not wanting to get involved. Not yet anyway. A vampire couldn’t die by a broken neck, no matter how weak they were. As long as he didn’t pick up a stake or something, she would let him blow off steam. Anna wasn’t nearly so composed as she rushed at him, trying to pull him off her. “Damon please! You wouldn’t have helped me. You know you wouldn’t,” she cried. 

“Why do you get it and I don’t?” Damon asked desperately. 

“The guard. The one at the church. The one who locked us in. She promised to turn him. He was obsessed with her. She had him under her spell, like everybody else. He let her go,” Pearl croaked out as he squeezed her throat. 

Damon let her go, stumbling backwards as he tried to make this new information fit his worldview and Elena’s heart broke for him. Even more so when Anna said, “Last I saw her was Chicago. Nineteen eighty three. She knew where you were, Damon. She didn’t care.” Elena had never seen Damon looked so wrecked. She’d never seen anyone look that heartbroken in her life. “I’m sorry,” Anna whispered sadly. 

Elena could see that she really was which was why she reached into a catatonic Damon’s bag and took out the blood bag that he’d brought for Katherine and handed it to Pearl with an apologetic smile. She’d already had one, but she looked like she could use another one. Pearl nodded her thanks and took it as she let Anna help her out of the hole. 

Once they were alone, she went back to Damon and put a hand on his shoulder comfortingly, but he didn’t respond, so she wrapped him in a warm hug, still getting no response until he pulled away from her and started walking off dazedly. In the opposite direction of the cars. She reached out and grabbed his hand, pulling him back the right way and he let her lead him. She got him into her SUV without protest and drove him back to her house. She was glad that no one was in sight when they got there because she didn’t think he was responsive enough to jump in her window and she snuck him upstairs to her room. 

There was no way she was sending him home to his brother in this state. There was no telling what Stefan would do to him when he couldn’t fight back. She pulled off his jacket and shoes and got him laid down in her bed and couldn’t resist leaning down to press a soft kiss to his forehead that made his eyes flutter closed. When he didn’t open them again, she smiled sadly and went to sit in her window seat to read, but it wasn’t long before she fell asleep there.


	8. Chapter 8

When Elena woke up as the sun hit her face, she found herself in her bed with Damon nowhere in sight. It took her a minute to realize that the window was open and she guessed that he must have woken up first and left. She was surprised that he was able to move her without waking her up though. When she went downstairs for breakfast, Jenna was the only one up already and quickly said, “I didn’t hear you come in last night. How was your date?” 

“It actually wasn’t a date,” Elena admitted. “A friend was going through a really tough time and needed some moral support.” 

“Oh? Which friend? I hope everything’s okay,” Jenna asked worriedly. 

“I don’t think you’ve met him, and I hope so too. He was in really bad shape when I saw him last night,” Elena told her. 

“A him?” Jenna raised an eyebrow. “Who is he? You know him from school?” She was trying to remember all the appropriate guardian questions to ask in this situation.

“I know his brother from school, but I actually met him first at a party,” she explained, stretching the truth a bit. “His name is Damon.” 

“And how old is Damon?” Jenna asked curiously. 

“I…I’m not sure actually. Not much older than me,” she shrugged in a complete lie, but it wasn’t like she could tell her aunt that he was over a hundred and fifty years old. 

“But he’s just a friend?” 

“Yes, Aunt Jenna. He’s just a friend,” Elena rolled her eyes. Thankfully she was finished with breakfast by then and decided to go looking for him to make sure he was okay. 

As she pulled up to the boarding house, she was suddenly glad for the pretend compulsion. If Stefan was here, he would be more than a little suspicious at her looking for Damon otherwise. Though even with it he would probably try to prevent it. She knocked on the door and Stefan opened it a few minutes later. “Elena? What are you doing here?” he asked worriedly. 

“I’m looking for Damon, actually. Is he home?” she asked nonchalantly. 

“I don’t think that’s the best idea…”

Elena took a second to think of how she would respond to this if she didn’t know they were vampires before she looked irritated at him. “And since when do you get to tell me who to be friends with?” 

“Look, Damon’s not what you think,” Stefan tried to reason with her. 

“What is he then?” she challenged. 

“He’s dangerous,” Stefan tried to be vague. It wasn’t like he could tell her the truth. 

“Not to me, he’s not,” she said firmly. “Are you gonna let me in?” 

“Yes. He is,” she heard Damon slur from behind Stefan before he pulled the door open the rest of the way, body-blocking Stefan to give her room to step inside. “As I’ve said before, Elena. You’re always welcome.” 

“Thank you, Damon,” she said with a sad smile at his obviously drunk state. His shirt was even buttoned crookedly. Stefan sighed, but just resolved to keep an eye on the situation so he followed them to the living room, taking a very long time to pour himself a drink before going to sit on the couch. Elena rolled her eyes at him, despite understanding why he was doing this. He thought that Damon had threatened to kill her recently. It didn’t make it any easier to deal with. Especially since he presumably didn’t know about their field trip last night. “Why don’t you show me your room,” she suggested to Damon. 

Damon grinned amusedly as he got up, sloshing a bit of his drink. “I thought you’d never ask,” he slurred suggestively. 

“Not for that,” she laughed as she smacked him. 

Stefan headed up to his room since it was closer to Damon’s in case he needed to intervene, but sighed when he heard the water running and Damon’s white noise machine start up. 

Elena looked at Damon curiously when he started the water and turned the machine on and he shrugged as he plopped on the bed, arms behind his head. “I’m assuming you wanted to relocate so we could talk privately. Vampires have very good hearing. White noise is the only way to keep him from eavesdropping.” 

“I didn’t realize that,” Elena admitted as she went over and sat at the foot of his bed, legs crossed and facing him. “How are you?” she asked concerned. 

“Great, Elena. Walking on sunshine. You?” 

“Don’t do that, Damon,” she said sadly. 

“Do what?” 

“Pretend you’re fine when I know you’re not,” she said pointedly. “I’m your friend, Damon.”

“I don’t have friends,” he said irritated. 

“Yes, you do,” she argued. “And I’m not going to let you push me away just because you’re hurting right now.”

“I’m a vampire, Elena. We don’t do friends and we don’t get hurt.”

“Liar,” she said bluntly. 

Before she knew it she was pinned against the wall with Damon’s hand at her throat. “Do you realize how easy it would be for me to kill you right now? Just a little twitch of my hand and snap.”

Elena wasn’t worried. He wasn’t even squeezing her throat. She could see the pain and loss in his eyes and knew that he was just lashing out. Trying to push her away so that he could wallow alone. “Do it then,” she challenged as she met his eyes. “If it’s that easy, then do it.”

“I have killed more people than you could imagine, Elena,” he snarled. “Just for fun or because I was bored.” 

“That doesn’t surprise me,” she said completely calm. 

“You think I won’t kill you? That you actually /mean/ something to me? You were useful when I needed your help. Now you’re not. It’s as simple as that,” Damon snapped. 

Elena could feel the doubt rising in her at his words, but didn’t let it show. She knew it was stupid. There was a lot that he did that he hadn’t needed to do to get her help. “Kill me then, if I mean nothing to you. Other than your brother, no one even knows I’m here and I’m sure you can handle him. There’s nothing stopping you.” 

She felt his hand twitching over her throat, tightening and loosening ever so slightly, before he shoved away and let her go, turning to look out the window. His hand went to the window frame as though to hold himself up and she could see his shoulders rising and falling with his heavy breaths. “You should leave, Elena.” 

Elena shook her head and walked up behind him, putting a hand on the center of his back. “No, I shouldn’t.”

“Why?” his voice cracked. “Why do you care? Why does it even matter?” 

“I told you, Damon. You’re my friend. And if I was hurting you wouldn’t hesitate to be there for me. Probably after killing whoever dared to hurt me,” she tried a joke. 

Damon snorted in amusement, brushing away the single tear that escaped his eye before he turned to look at her. “How can you have so much faith in me? In a murderous vampire?”

“Because there is so much more to you than that,” she said gently. 

“You know…the last time someone tried to convince me of that, I killed your history teacher to prove them wrong,” he pointed out, more than a little unsettled by her words. 

“And I just gave you the chance to prove me wrong and you didn’t take it,” she said smugly. “I don’t care if you want to keep up the act with everyone else, but everyone needs at least one person that they’re free to be themselves around. You’re that person for me so let me be that person for you.” 

Damon sighed and sank back onto his bed. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin,” he admitted. It had been so long since he opened up to anyone, and he wasn’t even sure he wanted to now, but she was right. He couldn’t kill her and she obviously wasn’t going to give up, so he didn’t have a lot of options. 

“You can start by answering my question honestly. How are you doing?” 

“I don’t even know,” Damon shook his head, grabbing for his bourbon again. “The whole point of this stuff is to keep from figuring that out.” 

Elena huffed a laugh. That was honest alright. “That’s understandable. Do you want to talk about what happened?” 

“No. I really don’t,” Damon told her. 

“Okay,” she agreed. 

“What? I thought the whole point of this was to get me to open up,” he said confused as he took a long swig from the bottle. 

“No, it was to get you to stop shutting me out and putting on an act. You can open up in your own time,” she said gently. 

“Fine. Let’s talk about something else then,” he almost pleaded. 

“Okay,” she agreed. “Why don’t you tell me more about vampires. You mentioned good hearing…” By the time she left a few hours later, they had covered a variety of topics and he was looking a lot steadier than he had when she got there, so she considered it a job well done. She knew it would take time for him to be really okay, but he would get there.


	9. Chapter 9

That afternoon, Elena was heading for the grill when she bumped into someone she hadn’t expected to see. “Anna,” she greeted her with a smile. 

“Elena,” Anna returned. 

“I understand that things were rather heated last night, but it is still polite to introduce people, Annabelle.” 

“Sorry, Mama,” she said sheepishly. “Elena this is my mother, Ms. Pearl. Mama, this is Elena Gilbert.” 

“Gilbert, is it?” Pearl’s eyes narrowed. “Won’t you join us for dinner?” 

Elena was more than a little nervous at the appraising look that she was getting from the older vampire. “It depends on what kind of dinner you mean,” she told her. “I was on my way to the grill if you want to come along.” 

Anna bit her lip to keep from snickering. She couldn’t help but like Elena. “We’d like that. Wouldn’t we Mama?” she asked hopefully. Pearl nodded curtly and Elena led the way. 

Once they were seated in an out of the way booth that was still enough in the open that Elena wouldn’t be likely to end up dead, Elena started the conversation. “You should know that, unlike my ancestors, I don’t judge people just for their species.” 

“Is that so,” Pearl said skeptically. 

“Yes. It is. I prefer to judge people based on their personality and vampires are people too,” she explained. 

“This town is our home too and we will not be run out of it,” Pearl said firmly, making her stance known from the start. Anna had told her that this girl was on vervain so she couldn’t be compelled to forget what they were. 

“And I don’t intend to do so. As long as you don’t go around killing people your secret is safe with me and I have no problem with you making a home here.”

“And if we do kill people?” Pearl asked. “Will you out us to the council and have us killed?” 

“That would be a last resort,” Elena told her. “I would prefer if we could reach an arrangement that didn’t involve /anyone/ dying.” 

“But if it comes to it, you will put the lives of humans before the lives of vampires,” Pearl said distastefully. 

“No. If it came to it the number of lives that would be saved would be the important thing,” Elena explained. “If one or two lives is the price for dozens, that would be the deciding factor for me.” 

“And if we kill someone on accident?” Pearl asked, trying to figure her and her stance out. 

“An accident is an accident,” Elena shrugged. “As long as you make every reasonable effort not to repeat it.” 

“I see,” Pearl said thoughtfully, watching Elena’s reactions carefully even as the waiter came over to take their order. Once they were alone again, she brought up another topic. “Do you realize where much of your family’s holdings came from?” 

“Not really,” Elena admitted. “Why?” 

“Because much of what your family owns was stolen from the vampires they so carelessly attempted to slaughter. Including my apothecary which is now the medical clinic of Dr. Grayson Gilbert, according to the sign,” Pearl told her. 

“I didn’t realize that,” Elena said sheepishly. “I’m guessing you’re bringing it up because you want it back?” 

“Yes. I do,” Pearl told her. “I would even be willing to pay a fair market price for it.” 

“I won’t have access to any of that until I turn eighteen next year,” Elena told her, already thinking it over as she talked. “And the person who currently holds control over it is as much of a vampire hater as the Gilberts you knew back then.”

“Then you’re useless to me,” Pearl said irritated. 

“Hold on now. I would think that people as old as you would have a little more patience,” Elena said almost amusedly. “When I /do/ get control over it next year, I would be willing to /give/ it back to you.”

“What’s the catch?” Pearl asked suspiciously. 

“Peace,” she told her. “You can feed as you wish, as long as you do it humanely, and be careful because there are people who are still on vervain around here. No killing anyone in town or the surrounding area. My birthday is at the end of June. If you keep the agreement in good faith until then, your property will be returned to you.” It wasn’t fair that it was literally stolen from them in the first place. 

“And I’m just supposed to accept your word?” Pearl asked, more than a little unsettled by this strange girl. 

“I would offer to put it in writing, but something tells me a contract to not kill people might raise a few eyebrows,” Elena joked.

Anna couldn’t help but snicker at that before she added her two cents to the conversation. “I trust her, Mama.”

“You’re a naïve girl,” Pearl pointed out. “But I will accept your agreement for the moment. Should you break your promise, your life and that of your family will be forfeit. I will have my property back one way or another.”

“I understand,” Elena agreed, offering her hand to shake and Pearl took it. 

“Then I believe we are finished here,” Pearl said as she started to get up. 

“Actually, I have a few questions for you, if you don’t mind,” Elena said hopefully. 

Pearl considered it for a moment before sitting back down. It had been a long time since she’d had a conversation with anyone save her daughter for the last day. “Very well, but I will not promise you answers.”

“Can you tell me about Katherine?” she asked.

“Why do you wish to know about her?” Pearl asked curiously. 

“Because I’m trying to figure out how she could do that to Damon,” she admitted. She just couldn’t understand it. 

“Because Katherine cares about no one but Katherine. She toyed with both Salvatore brothers until she was bored with them and then she moved on. It is what she does. They are far from the first, nor will they be the last. The longer she can keep them chasing her, the more she enjoys the game,” Pearl told her, seeing no harm in telling her that much. 

“That’s…horrible,” Elena said disgustedly. 

“That is Katherine,” Pearl said matter-of-factly. “She is the one who got us caught because of her games with the brothers, and then she left us all there to rot while she made her escape. Even me, her supposed best friend. Joining forces with Katherine Pierce always ends in ruin.” 

“I’m sorry,” Elena said sympathetically. “No one should be treated that way.” 

“You care for the Salvatore brothers?” Pearl asked her. 

“Damon, yes. Stefan not so much,” she told her. 

“Be careful with them,” Pearl warned. 

“Why?” Elena asked confused. As far as she knew Pearl had been locked in a tomb since before they turned. 

“Because they are young and foolhardy and for vampires that is not a good combination,” Pearl told her. “It will be their ruin and if you are not careful, they will take you down with them.” 

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Elena promised. 

“Now I have another question for you,” Pearl said. When Elena motioned for her to go on, she asked, “What exactly happened in the tomb last night? All of the bodies were burned…”

Elena sighed sadly. “I’m sorry for that. Damon lost it when Katherine was nowhere to be found and threw the torch. The fire was already raging by the time either of us noticed.” 

“I see,” Pearl nodded. It was an accident then. “Yet you still warned us on your way out.” 

“Of course, I did. You didn’t deserve to be caught in it too.”

“But all the others…”

“There was nothing we could do for them. It would have taken too long to revive them and get them moving,” Elena pointed out. 

“And if I had still been unable to move?” Pearl asked. 

“Vampires are strong right? I’m sure Anna would have been able to carry you,” Elena pointed out. 

“Yes, I would have,” Anna added. Pearl nodded at Elena and when it seemed she didn’t have any more questions, she got up to leave and Anna scurried after her. 

Once she was alone, Bonnie joined her in the booth since they had been planning to meet here before Elena got waylaid. “Who was that?” she asked curiously. 

“Old family friends,” Elena explained. “Sorry, I just ran into them outside. They just got to town and wanted to catch up.” 

“Okay, that’s fair,” Bonnie shrugged. “So did you decide yet what costume you’re wearing to the Halloween carnival next week?” 

Elena groaned. “No, I hadn’t even thought about it.” 

“Well you have to go. Just because you don’t have a date doesn’t mean you can get out of it. Caroline and I are going solo too.” 

“I know. I’ll be there,” she sighed. “I still have the costume that Matt and I planned before the breakup so if I don’t find anything else I’ll just wear that.”


	10. Chapter 10

The next day, Elena went by the boarding house after lunch, glad to learn that Stefan was out hunting so they didn’t have to sequester away in Damon’s room for some privacy and they lounged on the couch in the living room. Damon wasn’t doing much better. He was still drunk, but at least his clothes were on correctly today, so it was a small improvement. Though that could be because he was wearing a t-shirt instead of a button up. They kept the subject matter light, but Elena made it clear that she was there if he wanted to talk about anything else. 

Damon was still more than a little uncomfortable with her. He still didn’t understand how she could be so accepting of everything he was. She was kind and compassionate and not just to him, but to everyone. The two things just didn’t fit. He’d threatened to kill her yesterday and she didn’t even flinch. She had a faith in him that no one had ever shown. Not even when he was human. Before he became a monster. No one ever actually cared about him. Not even Katherine, apparently. He’d known that he shared her affections with Stefan, but he’d thought that they were actually there until he learned otherwise. 

Elena was different. Sure, she looked like Katherine, but she was /his/ friend and only his. The friend part was also confusing for him. He didn’t have friends. He hadn’t had friends since before he was turned. He didn’t care about people. Especially not humans. Humans were food. How the hell had she managed to get to him like this? He found himself looking forward to her company and that connection he’d felt since the moment they met just got stronger by the day. It didn’t make sense. He spent most of the day trying to turn it all over in his mind even as they carried on a conversation. 

Elena found herself drawn more and more to Damon. She’d had a thing for him since the moment they’d met, even if it had been overshadowed by the tragedy of that night for a long time. She knew it was a bad idea though. He had just spent a century and a half chasing another woman and then had his heart and soul crushed by her. There was no way he was ready to move on yet. Hell, he may never be ready. Not in her lifetime anyway. She was fine just being his friend though. He needed a friend and to be honest, so did she.

It wasn’t that she didn’t have plenty of friends already, but she needed someone that didn’t try to fit her into a little box. Someone who could just let her be herself and figure out who that was without any pressure. Someone that knew how she felt about things and could accept her opinions. Caroline and Matt didn’t know about vampires at all, and ever since Bonnie had started training as a witch with her grandmother she had a low opinion of vampires. There was so much of her life now that she couldn’t share with them, but she could with Damon. She might even go so far as to call Damon her best friend, not that she would ever tell her other friends that. 

Another friend that happened to sneak up on her was Anna. When she was able to get out from her mother’s thumb that was. She got that it was how things were back when they were from, but it bothered her how controlling Pearl was of her. She just hoped she loosened up a bit as she caught up with the times. Damon was a little nervous about her friendship with Anna, pointing out more than once that vampires didn’t make the best of friends, but she just countered that he did, so why couldn’t Anna. Still, he never tried to make her break it off. Just giving warnings every so often. Anna wasn’t invited into her house though. Not as long as she was so subservient to her mother who Elena didn’t completely trust yet. 

The Halloween carnival came and went, and Anna even managed to sneak out to come with them. Damon took a hard pass though. He still wasn’t coming out of the house much, so she didn’t really blame him. Unfortunately, it seemed that there was another vampire in town though because one of the students was found dead at the carnival. Stefan, who had managed to hang out with them thanks to Caroline deciding that he was her new obsession, immediately jumped to the conclusion that it was Damon. Not that he said anything since she wasn’t supposed to know about vampires, but she could see it in his eyes and the fact that he immediately pulled out his phone to call his brother. 

Elena knew that it wasn’t Damon though, and Anna assured them that it wasn’t her or her mother, which left a mystery on their hands. Funnily enough, it didn’t take long after the phone call from Stefan for Damon to show up at her side and by the end of the night, he had attacked again and gotten staked by Damon. As soon as they saw who it was, Anna gasped. “Oh, I’m so sorry. This is my fault.” 

“Why? What happened?” Elena asked worriedly. 

“Last week, just after we made our deal, I was feeding on him and he struggled a little too much and almost died. I fed him some of my blood to heal him and…he must have died again after,” Anna said regretfully. 

“It’s okay,” Elena hugged her. “You couldn’t have known what would happen. You tried to do a good thing.” 

Even Damon couldn’t argue with that. It was something that could have happened to any of them at any time. He did feel the need to say though, “That’s why you compel them before you feed if you’re not willing to kill them.” 

“I know,” Anna sighed. “It’s just been a long time since I fed that way and I forgot.”

When Damon was approached the next day by the sheriff who was still looking for another vampire, he knew what he had to do. He decided to throw a party at the grill, partially for Stefan’s birthday, though that was just to get his target there. He cursed himself for not asking Elena to skip it when she ended up bonding with Lexi over the course of the night. Did she seriously have to adopt every stray vampire that came through town? It was too late to call it off though. Lexi had to be sacrificed to protect them all. He just hoped that Elena would see that. 

The day after the party, Elena showed up at the boarding house and took him to task for it, making him feel even shittier than he already had and when she left he hit the bottle even harder than he already had been for the last two weeks and for the next week he nearly drowned in the stuff. He still kept to his promise to Elena though, if only in letter, but definitely not in spirit. He just drove further away to do his killing, keeping it out of town. 

It was a week before she came by again, and he was more than surprised to see her. “I thought you gave up on me,” he scoffed. 

“No, Damon,” she shook her head. “I was mad at you, yes, but you’re still my friend. That’s not going to change.”

“But you’re not mad at me anymore?” he asked hopefully. 

“No, I’m still mad at you. Just not /as/ mad. You do realize that when we made the deal about no killing I didn’t just mean humans right?” 

“You didn’t have any problem with me killing Logan Fel,” he pointed out. 

“Because he was a threat. You were protecting people,” she replied. 

“And killing Lexi was to protect people too,” Damon argued. “The council wouldn’t accept Logan as the only vampire in town. They were hunting for whoever turned him. Their hunting was putting all of us at risk and I needed a scapegoat. Unless you would have preferred I point them to Anna or let them dig deep enough to discover all of us?” 

“Okay, but did it have to be Lexi? Couldn’t you have found someone else? She was good.” 

“I know,” Damon told her. “But it’s not like vampires grow on trees. She showed up at just the right time and was the only one outside our circle.” 

Elena sighed heavily. “I still don’t like it. I do see your point, but we’ll just have to agree to disagree,” she said wearily. 

“So…we’re okay?” Damon asked hopefully. 

“Yeah. We’re okay,” Elena said with a smile, hugging him tightly. It wasn’t something she did often, but this time she needed it, and apparently he needed it just as much because he hugged her back just as tightly.


	11. Chapter 11

Over the next few weeks, Damon and Elena repaired their friendship back to like new condition, which seemed to the cue for something to break. Elena had asked Anna if she had any pictures of Damon from before. Especially once she found out he was a soldier, she wanted to see him in his uniform. Anna agreed and brought her a photo album from back then and they sat on the porch looking through it. All went well until she saw a picture of Katherine, and she just happened to be with Damon in the picture which really didn’t help. “That’s…she…oh my god…” 

“Elena? What’s wrong?” Anna asked worriedly. She assumed that Damon had already mentioned her uncanny resemblance to Katherine so she didn’t understand why she was freaking out. 

“I…I have to go,” Elena said, getting up and racing for her car. She had no idea where she was going. She just had to get away. To get out. She couldn’t deal. She and Damon had been getting closer and she had just started believing that maybe he could move on at some point. That maybe he might even want to move on with her. Now this…was she just a replacement for the one he really wanted? Was that why he was her friend in the first place? Because she was the closest he could get to the love of his life? Her tears fell so thick and heavy that she lost control of her car and ended up flipping it a few times. 

She was kicking herself once she recovered. She shouldn’t have been driving when she was so upset and now she was stuck out here in the middle of nowhere, and quite literally stuck in her seatbelt that wouldn’t come undone. Before she could consider the idea of contortionism too much, suddenly Damon was there. 

“You okay in there?” he asked worriedly. “You look stuck,” he realized before she could reply. He went to lift the car back over, but when she started crying he was right back by her side. “Shh, I’m gonna get you out of here. I want you to put your hands on the roof…just like that. You ready? One…two…three,” he pulled the seatbelt out and she fell to the roof, so he pulled her out, still asking if she was okay. 

He managed to help her stand up and checked her over as best he could. One arm was holding her up while the other trailed over her face and through her hair, as much to reassure himself that she was okay as anything else. The only coherent thing he got before she passed out was, “I look like her.” He had no idea what that meant, but he couldn’t find anything really wrong with her, so he just put her in his car and pulled hers off to the side of the road, continuing on the trip he had been taking before he saw her. 

The sun was already up by the time Elena woke up and she was completely freaked out and even seemed mad at him for something and she made him pull over. Among her complaints were the fact that she wrecked her car and needed to take care of it, he couldn’t just kidnap her and take her to Georgia, and no one knew where she was, but when he tried to figure out why she seemed to be mad at him, she completely clammed up. He managed to talk her into taking a time-out from all her problems though and they were back on the road. 

Once they were driving again, Elena asked, “So where are we going anyway?” 

“I got a lead on Katherine. More like, someone who knows someone who might know where she is, but hey, it’s something right?”

Elena fumed even more at that, but forced it from her mind. She was on a time-out from all her problems so she might as well focus on his. “Would you even want it that way?” she asked incredulously. “I mean…if you have to chase her down and all but force her to come back to you…” 

Damon sighed heavily, feeling the sting of rejection again at her words. “No, it’s not like that, Elena. You’re right. I don’t want it that way. But I want to know why. I /need/ to know why. If I’m ever gonna close that chapter of my life for good I need an explanation and damnit I /deserve/ an explanation.” He didn’t say why he was on such a tear to close that chapter of his life. He couldn’t. Not yet. 

“Oh,” Elena said nervously, biting her lip indecisively. “I kinda…know that already…if hearing it from someone else will help?” 

Damon turned to look at her as he pulled up at the curb near their destination. “How do you know and why is this the first I’m hearing about it?” he asked hurt. 

“I asked Pearl. Because I just couldn’t understand how she could do something like that to you. I would have told you sooner if it was good news, but I just…I couldn’t bear to hurt you any more than you were already hurting.”

“Any more than not knowing hurt?” he asked pointedly. 

“I think it might be worse than not knowing,” Elena said sympathetically. 

“Well you might as well spit it out,” Damon said already bracing himself for it. “Because I won’t give up until I find out anyway.” 

Elena winced as she said quietly, too quietly for any human to hear, but luckily, or unluckily, he was a vampire and picked up the soft, “Because she never cared.” 

Damon took a few deep breaths. He had suspected as much but the confirmation hurt. “I do hope you have more than just that.” 

Elena took a deep breath of her own before telling him exactly what Pearl said. “Katherine never cared about anyone but herself. She was just playing with you and Stefan until she got bored. Apparently, it was a game that she played often and…” she hesitated at saying the rest. 

“And what?” Damon asked tensely. God he hated how she was drawing it out. Just hit him once and get it over with already. 

“And part of the game was keeping men chasing her as long as she could. It made it more fun for her,” Elena finished, tears of empathy welling up in her eyes. 

Damon swallowed heavily a few times, gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white and it was a long moment before he said anything. When Elena reached a hand to his arm, he pulled it away and found words. “Right. Well. I guess we’re in a good place then,” he got out of the car and headed for the bar and she followed him, not sure if they would let her in or not. 

Elena marveled at how easily he was able to pull his masks up after that as the bartender grabbed him in a searing kiss and he joked around and flirted with both the bartender and her. She could see the soul-deep pain behind his eyes though and the way he was tossing back shots made it even more obvious. At least to her. She was even able to forget about her own troubles. Almost. Right up until Bree called him a walk-away Joe. Then she remembered why he always walked away. Because he was still in love with Katherine which just brought it all crashing down on her again. 

Damon raised an eyebrow at her when he asked for a beer, but in true Damon form he didn’t judge. Even when the beer turned to shots. Elena took a small amount of pleasure in out-drinking him, choosing to forget that he’d been drinking for hours before she even started. He seemed to greatly enjoy her teasing him for it and she managed to forget her issues once again due to the large amounts of alcohol. It wasn’t long before she left him at the bar though and went to play some pool. Everything went well until her phone rang and she realized that she forgot to call Jenna. She rushed outside to take the call and the next thing she knew she was grabbed by another vampire who told her that she was bait for Damon. 

She wanted to warn him, but she knew it wouldn’t matter. He would be coming after her either way and warning or not, he was drunk enough that he didn’t stand a chance. Besides, she had no way to warn him anyway. That didn’t mean that she didn’t try when he came around the corner, but it was too late. He was on the ground being beaten and even from where she was she could hear his bones breaking over and over and he didn’t even have a chance to fight back. When the gasoline started pouring all over him, she heard Damon ask, “Who are you?” as she rushed over to try and help.


	12. Chapter 12

“Oh, that’s perfect. You have no idea,” the other vampire sneered. 

“What are you talking about? What did he do?” Elena asked worriedly, hoping that she could find some way to help him. 

“He killed my girlfriend,” the vampire snapped towards her. 

Damon knew it was all over then and didn’t even bother fighting anymore. Even if he could have. The best he could hope for now was that this guy would take his revenge and leave Elena alone. He knew how revenge worked for vampires. It was all-consuming. Just like the rest of their emotions. And with an offense like that, Elena wouldn’t fight for him and he couldn’t blame her. He just focused on blocking as much of it out as he could even as the guy screamed at him. “What did she do to you huh? What did she do to you?” 

“Nothing,” Damon managed to say nonchalantly. Any incentive for Elena to give up on him and run was all the better. 

“I don’t understand,” Elena yelled from as close as he would let her get. 

“My girlfriend went to visit Stefan. And Damon killed her. Got it?” he snapped angrily. He wanted her to understand why he was doing what he was doing. That he wasn’t just a mindless killer. When he noticed Damon trying to get up, he kicked him in the face. 

“Lexi?” Elena realized. “Lexi was your girlfriend? She told me about you. She said that you were human.” 

“I was,” he said simply, tears in his eyes.

Elena saw him pull matches out of his pocket and all she could think of was keeping him talking. Maybe Damon would have time to recover and either get away or win the fight. “Lexi turned you?” she asked.

“You want to be with someone forever, you have to live forever,” he told her. 

When Elena saw him kick Damon again, she started to panic. “She loved you,” Elena told him. “She said that…when it’s real you can’t walk away.”

“Well that’s a choice you’re not gonna have to make,” he said coldly. 

“Don’t,” Elena begged. “Please…don’t hurt him.” 

“I’m doing you a favor,” he snapped as he lit the match. 

“Lexi loved you,” Elena wouldn’t give up. “And she was good. That means you’re good too. Be better than him.” She swallowed around the lump in her throat. “Don’t do this…I’m begging you. Please,” she cried. 

He clenched his jaw for a moment before he reached down and picked Damon up by the front of his shirt and threw him across the alley into a wall before turning back to Elena who said a sincere, “Thank you.” 

“It wasn’t for you,” he said hatefully before he took off. 

Elena rushed over to Damon and fell to her knees beside him, ignoring the overpowering smell of the gas. “Oh my god, are you okay?” she asked, tears still spilling over her cheeks. 

Damon managed to roll over and look up at her almost in awe, as he tried to pull himself to sitting, already feeling himself starting to heal. She helped him sit up and he reached a hand to her cheek. “You…fought for me,” he breathed out. “Even after…” He couldn’t even manage any more words as he pulled her forward into a kiss. He didn’t even care how much it hurt right now. He just needed to kiss her like he needed air. 

Elena melted into the kiss for a moment, not even noticing the taste of the gas in his mouth, and just in utter bliss at the fact that he was kissing her. Then she remembered how all this started and pulled away. “Damon, don’t. I-I’m not Katherine,” she turned away from him and got to her feet. 

Damon pulled himself to his feet with a great deal of effort, even as his bones were snapping back into position. This was far more important than his pain right now though. “I know that, Elena. Believe me. Hell, Katherine would never have even considered fighting for me for anything remember?” 

Elena shook her head and turned back to him. “You don’t get it, Damon. I know. I know everything,” she snapped. “I look like her. That’s why you were nice to me. That’s why you let me get close. That’s why you care. Especially now. You can’t have her so I’ll do? You really think I can live like that?” 

Damon blinked in shock at her for a minute, which also gave his legs time to start working enough to walk towards her. “You think…god, no, Elena. No. That’s not…I mean…At first, yeah. I was curious because you looked like her but…”

“But what?” Elena crossed her arms and glared at him. 

“But that connection we had…from the very first moment…that had nothing to do with Katherine, Elena. It took me a little while to realize that, but it didn’t. You’re not Katherine. I /know/ that. I /feel/ it down to my bones. You don’t even look that much like her.” 

“Please,” Elena scoffed. “I look exactly like her.”

“No, you don’t,” Damon shook his head, moving closer. “You have a softness to your features that she never could.” He reached out and brushed his hand over her cheek under her eyes. “Your eyes have a warmth, a kindness, that she could only dream of. You have no idea how much difference that makes.” He didn’t even bother mentioning her hair. That was just on the surface and wouldn’t help his case any. 

“Damon…” Elena breathed out, feeling herself starting to soften, but not quite ready to let go yet. 

“The whole reason for this trip, Elena, was because I needed to be able to put the whole Katherine mess behind me. Because I was falling in love with you. And I wanted us to have a clean slate,” he said gently, sliding his hand more firmly over her cheek and to her neck. “I never wanted the idea of Katherine to come between us, because I love /you/. I love you more than I could ever have loved her. I…I wanted us to build a future together without ghosts of the past getting in the way. Please believe me, Elena. What I feel for you has nothing to do with anything that I used to feel for her.” 

Elena found herself having trouble breathing at his speech. She once wished that someone would love her the way Damon loved Katherine, but here he was telling her that he loved her even more. That he wanted a life with her. How was she ever supposed to resist that? She had one more question though before she could let herself truly believe. “You wanted to be turned to have her forever. Would you want to turn me?”

“God, Elena, you have no idea how much I would give to have forever with you,” he breathed out, leaning his forehead against hers. “But more than that, I want you to have everything you dream of out of life and if you can’t find that as a vampire, then I will live the rest of your life by your side and when you die, I’ll go with you because living in a world without you in it will never be an option for me.” 

Elena felt the tears welling up in her eyes as she surged forward and kissed him deeply, and his arms came around her and crushed her to him as he kissed her back desperately. “I love you, Damon,” she whispered as they broke for air.

Damon closed his eyes against the wash of emotion that nearly bowled him over at her words as he whispered back, “And I love you, Elena. Always.” 

“As much as I would love to continue this, the smell of gas is really starting to make me woozy,” Elena said with a chuckle and Damon laughed and pulled away. 

“Right. There’s a motel around the corner. Why don’t you check us in since you’re a little less covered than I am. Here,” he handed her his card. He would leave it completely up to her whether to get one bed or two. Or even one room or two. 

She was back to get him a minute later and they headed to their room. “I’ll let you get the first shower since you’re completely drenched while I rinse our clothes in the sink,” she offered.

Damon nodded, taking the hint that showering together wasn’t an option, which probably meant that sex was off the table too, but there was only one bed so at least he could spend the night holding her which was more than enough for him. He didn’t strip until he was in the bathroom and tossed his clothes out to her. 

Elena stripped out of her shirt and jeans, glad that the transfer hadn’t leaked through to her bra and underwear and she filled up the sink with water. She started with his boxer-briefs, glad that they were silk which meant they would dry quickly. She didn’t mind sharing a bed with him, but she would be more comfortable if he was at least wearing something when she did. At least for now. Once that was done, she hung them up over the closet bar and moved on to her shirt. By the time Damon was out of the shower, wearing one of the motel robes, all the clothes were clean and drying and she’d had to drain and refill the sink four times. 

Damon stepped out, still drying his hair and stopped short at the sight of her wearing practically nothing. His breath hitched as he gazed at her for a long moment before he tore his eyes away and continued into the room, leaving her free to take her own shower. 

Elena could feel his eyes on her like fire and she was having just as much trouble breathing as he was. No one had ever looked at her that way before and it was intoxicating. Once he pulled himself away she took a shaky breath and headed into the bathroom herself. His boxer-briefs were dry in about an hour and he put them back on before stripping off the robe and getting into bed, so she took off her own robe, leaving her in her bra and underwear and slipped in next to him. 

Damon pulled her close and leaned his head against hers, breathing in her scent as she snuggled up to his side. “I love you, Elena,” he whispered. 

She smiled brightly and whispered back, “I love you too, Damon,” and tilted her head up for a long slow kiss before they went to sleep. By morning their clothes would be dry and they would head home.


End file.
